I don't see a huge problem with this, it'd mainly be down to how much extra coding work it takes to add it in. As for the second idea, it'd depend really, the way you're putting it sounds more like it'd be an instanced area, where the quest would only actually 'begin' when the player was there doing the quest. You could of course do this without an instance, but it would be rather difficult to set up, especially if multiple players attempt to do the quest at once, the npcs would be cross-spawning unless it is instanced.
Will just have to see what Jeromy thinks about it first.
